MONTHLY 



JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE 



VOL. III. APRIL, 1848. , WO. 10. 



MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA, 



COMPARED WITH MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND IN THEIR AGRICULTURAL 

 AND DOMESTIC CONDITION AND POLICY. 



AGRICULTURAL FAIR AT EASTON, MARYLAND, OCTOBER, 1847. 



The accounts which have appeared of this last exhibition of the zeal, industry 

 and taste of our friends in that region, of which we shall speak in another place 

 more particularly, have been highly favorable and auspicious ; nor is there any 

 good reason to be given why it should be otherwise — for it would be an egre- 

 gious error to attribute any defect of improvement to any general want of knowl- 

 edge of the means by which such improvement can alone be secured and accele- 

 rated. Still grosser, perhaps, would be the mistake that should ascribe any such 

 deficiency to want of industry on the part of the Farmers generally, in the dis- 

 trict referred to, or in the State at large. Our personal knowledge enables us 

 to assert the contrary. 



When we hear so much about the " ten-hour system " of labor in cities, and 

 demagogues make themselves hoarse in decrying the hardship and oppression 

 that would require more than ten hours' labor in the day from the poor mechanic 

 — and yet more when we see these poor mechanics, wearied out with sitting 

 around a new building, twirling their thumbs, until the clock strikes to go to 

 work according to the rules of the Trades Union — we often think of the Agri- 

 cultural Laborer, who, without the power of combination or the disposition to 

 complain, rises at 5 and drudges on, with brief intervals, until at least 6 P. M., 

 making at the least 13 hours : the master and farmer over all being, as he should 

 be, the first to call all hands at dawn of day, and the last to see all snug after 

 dark. From daylight to dark is the measure for him without whose products 

 all other classes would perish and disappear from the face of the earth.* 



No ! it is not so much for want of knowledge or of diligence that Agriculture 



* Here it may repay the trouble to note the difierence in tlie pay and the labor of the town mechanic 

 and the ajp-icultural worker. Take the gardener, for instance. In digging a square perch of ground, in 

 spits of the usual dimensions, (7 inches by 8 inches,) the spade has to be thrust in 700 times, and as each 

 spadeful of earth, if the spade penetrate 9 inches, as it ought to do, will weigh on the average full 17 

 pounds, eleven thousand nine hundred pounds of earth have to be lifted. As there are 160 perches or 

 roods in an acre, in digging that measure of ground the garden laborer has to cut out 112,000 spadefuls of 

 earth, weighing in the aggregate 17,000 cwts., or 850 tons, and during the work he moves over a distance 



of 14 miles. As the spade weighs between eight and nine pounds, he has to lift in fact 1,278 tons equal 



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